I think I found this after reading an email sent out on the ASATA listserv; it asked for participants for a survey on caste and Sikhism. Since I’m interested in both, I decided to take a quick look. The first notes wafted tentatively through my iBook’s wee speakers and I smiled: Van Halen. I knew exactly what kind of video this would be. We used to make ones just like it for JSA‘s Fall and Spring “State”, usually to open the conference. Well, it was either that or we’d blare Public Enemy‘s “Fight the Power“…
After watching it, I was moved, because I felt like so much of it was applicable to all of us, not just Sikhs. Someone Malayalee needs to make one of these, stat, I muttered…and then I realized that they didn’t. Maybe they should just watch this, I thought and that’s when I knew it belonged here, in a space where it would get the attention it rightly deserves.
Ravidasia // Khatri // Jatt // Tarkhan…The labels that divide us are endless. Caste, gender, class, and power tear apart our Qaum, our Gurdwaras, and our Pariwars. How do we overcome? How do we forge unity without silencing voices? [Jakara]
My closest friend in college was a Sikh girl from Fremont, who happened to be Tarkhan. My boyfriend from Freshman through Junior year was Jatt. So were all of his friends. They made fun of her when she wasn’t around and ignored her when she was. This baffled coconut-flavored me. “Why are you so mean to her?” I’d ask him, over and over. “She’s nice.”
“Because she’s…Tarkhan. They’re lower class. And so backwards– didn’t you say her parents tried to get her married when she was 17, that they didn’t even want to send her to college? Who the hell does that?”
“That’s not her fault, why are you taking it out on her?”
“Look, it’s a Sikh thing…it’s probably difficult to understand. Don’t you have a sorority thing to go to?”
::
I’m amazed at how often caste shows up on our comment threads, among second gen kids who should know better. Then I am humbled as I remember that I’m complicit in this too, when I tease my best friend about doing TamBrahm stuff or when I embroider stories from bygone UC Davis days with an extra adjective which probably isn’t necessary:
“Well a lot of students were from the Central Valley or Yuba City…so a good number of the desis I befriended were Jatt Sikh.”
It’s so insidious, the way this need to inform others of where we are in some dated hierarchy persists. Right now, we need to ask ourselves…why?
301! Murrrrland reprazent! 😉
Not just Jats, but probably the reason so many of us harken back to possible Aryan or Scythian ancestors – it’s because they’re imagined to be better looking (seriously, I think that’s a big part of it). Well, certainly not Arabs though. Depending entirely on your aesthetics of course; not everyone would agree. Also probably the perceived greater martial spirit.
arent most of these central asian countries military pushovers? arent they falling apart? you dont hear about the great military threat coming from central asia.
also. its not like you see tonnes of central asians winning beauty pageants.
Milli”
dc: “waking up every Saturday mornign to a blaring M.S. version of the Suprabatham…”
this was my dad’s supposedly “clever” strategy of waking me up in the morning without having to face my wrath in person. now when i visited, i am delighted by the sounds of his own top-volume rendition. it’s. just. great.
After two long years in the middle of nowhere africa, I visited a venkateshwara temple in nairobi and heard the MS version playing outside after not hearing it for almost two and a half years, and I started tearing up…my friends who were with me were wondering what the hell was wrong with me…
never thought I would grow so attached to a song in this way.
I can relate. I have those on MP3 on my computer. reminds me of dear ol mom and dad. as american as apple pie and suprabathams
I don’t think there was any ulterior “caste” motive in naming those psycho villains with “tamil names” and hero with a “Brahminic” name
I didn’t think so either, and frankly, until a previous commenter brought it up, I never considered that as an example of insidious casteism or anything. Funny the things people pick up on though.
If you want to be a r@cist d!ck this day in age, wouldnt you want to pretend to be wh!te people instead of some kind of vague uzbekistani or something?
Yes, but these attitudes are formed a few centuries back, when Arabs and Central Asians ruled the roost. These are “leftover” attitudes and has no relation with the current “truth” as it exists today. “Jews” and “Hindus” are thought of as “militarily weak” and “pushovers” till Israel and India was formed and atleast until 1967 and 1971 respectively, I think. It is like the “martial races” theory. I was reading through pre 1947 literature and was surprised at the insinuations of various authors about how India (and specifically Hindus) won’t survive the military onslaught from the north west and why Brits are needed to keep the peace.. Katherine Mayo’s “Mother India” is one such example.
wow…so people are claiming superiority because they came from a race that wasnt living in a hell hole a quarter millenium ago. is that supposed to be impressive? wtf?!
there has to be more recent things to be proud of than that!
there has to be more recent things to be proud of that that!
Jazzy B???
If one has to be proud of, it’s only one’s own personal, individual achievements and characterstics – not your parents, not your ancestors and certainly not those of the high-fliers among your caste/relgion/language/region etc.
So when a person comes to you and insinuates that he’s more intelligent than you because he’s a Bengali Brahmin, or when another person insinuates that he’s tougher than you because he’s a Jatt Rajput or when yet another person insinuates that she’s got more empathy because she’s an Orthodox Christian – put them in their place.
M. Nam
You must be so proud of such a low blow.
I however, am not in “my place” because your interpretation is incorrect; my empathy is an individual trait, not one conferred upon me by my religion– I never said I was more anything because I’m an Orthodox Christian. But if insulting me made your day more entertaining, I am glad I could be of assistance.
I’m sorry to come into the comment train so late. I took this survey yesterday and wondered if it would end up on the Mutiny. I’m a little surprised to see that this became a “caste system” vs. “U.S. racism/classism” conversation.
Firstly:
I would strongly urge non-Sikhs to REFRAIN the Jakara survey. The survey explicitly asks for Sikhs to respond, and this is largely because they are doing a modified form of a community assessment. I want to be clear that I’m not a Jakara planner, nor am I speaking on their behalf, but I’m pretty confident that they would like to do TARGETED research, and so having a large number of people who do not identify as Sikh answering their survey will not help them when they put together the conference.
I actually didn’t find out what our background was until I was a teenager, largely in part because my fam has been steadfastly anti-caste identification. I think I found out because my mom was angry at my bhua for saying that she wanted my cousin to marry a jatt. My mom felt religion was a much more important criteria, and that if that wasn’t important, then there should be no limiting factors along clan, caste, etc.
And about pro-jatt bhangra songs: I feel like this is more about embracing your hick background. Let’s face it, jatts are historically rednecks/hicks (as was mentioned), or at least they’re depicted that way. I think that’s where all the “pro-Jatt” bhangra songs come from — I don’t think they’re supposed to be about superiority, they’re supposed to be a way for people who are treated like crap and talked down to to find some sort of reason to feel proud of yourself. It’s a thin and dangerous line. On the religious side, it really shouldn’t matter, although culturally people have a lot of investment in these identities. On the cultural side, I think, depending on the identification/rationale, it can be fine to identify positively with a clan, but it shouldn’t go so far as to propose superiority or whatnot.
I know these are not equal examples, but I am totally down with identifying as South Asian American in the U.S. That doesn’t mean that I think desis are the bomb dot com over all other racial groups or anything. It’s just an important personal and political identity for me, because in many ways it has shaped both my experiences and my outlook on the world.
And on the response train: #51, Amardeep
Hey Amardeep, maybe this felt strange to you because it is totally inappropriate. 🙂 While there are supposed to be panj pyaare to whom prasad is served first, there is not supposed to be a distinction between the kind of prasad everyone else receives, and in what order. In fact, everyone is supposed to be served and treated equally. The requirement on not “eating from the same bowl” is about juutt [not sure how to transliterate that?], i.e. where someone “high caste” eats first from a bowl and lower castes are allowed to eat the remains. Prasad of course does not meet that criteria. It’s amazing how some people interpret “conservative” to mean extreme in the opposite regard.
#59, Shodan
Bhappa doesn’t just mean city-slicker, it’s definitely a caste definition, generally attributed to folks from the Patiala area, and often used as a put-down if you’re jatt. More on that later 🙂
#134, Chill
Haha, I actually grew up avoiding Indians instead of thinking that our shared subcontinental origin would be a source of bonding. Maybe this is because when you grow up in largely white communities everyone expects all the desi kids to be friends or to be in love with one another? So annoying.
PP #232
Troooooooooll.
I always found this funny, actually. Also, with respect to Central Asia – I think you’re analyzing anachronistically, but that’s just me.
While I’m sure it’s true (that there were Scythians and Aryans and Arabs and Central Asians and Mongolians and whatnot all up in the Indus River Valley), folks in the Indus River Valley, especially Punjabis, are MUTTS. I think the sooner we embrace that we are not incredibly inbred, the happier we will all be.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about the whole “Jatt” mentality, to put it one way. Some people overdo anything. I think in India, the role of community identifiers is different in substantial ways. I find caste in the context of South Asia a really creepy thing. People have lives ruined by that stuff, and not in same time ways. In the diaspora, I think its different. I think a lot of the bhangra-rap, “Jatts do it” stuff is diaspora stuff, and is mostly kids being kids. Mostly young guys who get kandas on their arms and stuff like that. But clearly, people have overdone it, and this thread is quite negative, and ragging on the community. Its the price of haumai I guess (pride). Chauvinism is unseemly, uncomfortable and worth ridicule.
But, I do think that as a community, the jatt community does have a few things to be proud of. They by and large participated in an anti-caste movement, and made significant gains, while expressing at least a modicum of egalatarian sentiment. Udham Singh, aka Ram Mohammed Singh Azad, was not an alien figure in the community, for his indepedence agitation and egalatarian tendencies. As a cartoon figure of a dude with a kanda tat saying “Jatts do it” I am sure there is much to mock. But there is also something substantial, if past-its-time, about the social movement in which jatts participated, from the time when they started to join the Sikh religion en masse. I would also look at the role of the agrarian uprising of Banda Bahadur as an indication of just how far agrarian people like the jatts had to come. And they by and large suceeded in entering modernity. The Jakara folks are a welcome infusion of rationality for the community, which has in some ways relied on past efforts when they can continue to make gains, among other things by focusing on how to be a successful diasporic community
It is NOT the orthodox Brahmin belief and please don’t condemn all Brahmins as bigots because of of one person’s misconceptions, especially when a lot of us relate the labels of Orthodox and Brahmin more to how we worship, eat and conduct socio-cultural activities, and not to who is Brahmin and who isn’t. Bigots will be bigots regardless of what caste, race, ethnicity or nation they are born into.
All humans are not born equal. The caste system was originally about the Bell curve of ability and employment regardless of who your parents were, and deteriorated into banal issues of birthright with time and invasions. Let’s strive as the inheritors of the present to go back to that, wherever in the world we live, and not devolve even farther back to flinging poo at the zoo.
Too late for that.
“That is the orthodox brahmin belief.”
Being completely honest, do you actually know any “orthodox” brahmins?
Let’s get free
Kiran Ahluwalia’s Koka
Well said..
Really? Let’s exclude all but the final 20 words– you think I should be put in my place for my “orthodox empathy”? If so, I don’t think it was well-said at all. I don’t respect passive-aggressive engagement.
This latent hostility is getting old.
So when a person comes to you and insinuates that he’s more intelligent than you because he’s being sly, put them in their place.
I was appreciating his statement in general. I’m surprised that you took offense. I re-read the statement. It is more generic.. Ok , let’s ask him to rephrase the statement as
added and removed ‘s’ in a few places.. 🙂
Thanks for that well-needed distraction, Sahej. I had the pleasure of seeing her in Santa Cruz with guitar impresario Rez Abbasi a while back. Kiran’s quite talented and has a well-tuned sense of humor; she’s currently on tour and would recommend her to fans of ghazal and those unfamiliar with the genre alike.
🙂
yeah, a little nice is needed isn’t it?
I think she’s great too btw
Definitely. This is my absolute favorite of hers. She revealed at the concert I attended that she doesn’t actually pen the lyrics to most of her songs, but accepts often anonymous submissions from budding South Asian poets around North America and then interprets them in her own unique way. Whatever her m.o. is, it works.
I don’t want to thread-jack any further, but I think I can merge the separate discussions of desi musicians and identity politics with this . I’m sure most of you have seen it before, but the lyrics have haunted me since my first listen and they always seem to come to me when I read threads such as this.
Alright, back to your regularly scheduled latent hostility and poo-flinging.
ah yeah bro, great choices
Uh…no. That’s okay. Let’s not and say we did, as my little sister used to annoy me by saying. 😉
While Prema’s characterization of “orthodox brahmin belief” is false, maitri’s
“especially when a lot of us relate the labels of Orthodox and Brahmin more to how we worship, eat and conduct socio-cultural activities”
attempts to use exceptions to make an argument. Let me ask: If a person (not born Brahmin, and let’s say male) were to eat, worship and conduct themselves in ways that are prescribed for brahmins, would you say “He’s a brahmin” or “He’s LIKE a brahmin”? Not picking on brahmins. Same for chettiar, thiyya, anyone.
IMO, eating/worship/practices can be better described by terms like ‘vaishnava’ or finer specifications like that.
I don’t see why anyone needs to know their caste or ever mention it in their life in order to keep their cultural connection with the past or for their spiritual practice.
Regardless of how it started, today, caste is about birth. One can’t just change it like changing congregations, beliefs, political parties, food habits. The best one can do is to not mention it and not think of it.
This is hard in India where everyday affairs (like economic status and opportunities) are associated with caste. (I don’t want to get into a debate as to whether this association is real. What is for certain is that most people do think it is real. ) It is no easier that for the US to just “forget race and move on”.
However, living in the West is a great opportunity to forget about caste – a fresh start.
And you bring us full-circle– that was essentially the point of the video which inspired the post. Being here is a great opportunity to put this ignorance behind us.
Hindu caste has no meaning outside India, which is why my Brahmin parents left India in the first place. However, let’s not forget our culture and why being Chettiar, Naidu, Shiite, Nair, Brahmin, Anglican, Orthodox, Jatt, Bengali, Kashmiri, Malayalee, Marathi, etc. is how each of us as an individual seeks our own god and finds our own peace. As long as I don’t hurt you by being a monkey-loving, wine-swilling Hindu Brahmin Packer fan, it’s all cool.
So, fresh question: If we are to “forget race and move on,” do we then stop calling ourselves black, white, brown, too?
On SATC right this second, typed across Carrie’s fake screen:
Mmmm, synchronicity.
Puliogre (#303,304,308,310):
When people in India talk of Central Asian ancestors, they aren’t referring to people like Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazakhs and what not (people with a somewhat “Asian” or Mongol appearance). Rather, people think of Aryans and Scythians, who were probably more like today’s Pashtuns, Iranians, Kurds. I think a lot of Sindhis (look at Mrs. Subhnani on the other thread), Punjabis, Kashmiris, as well as some people in other parts of northern and western India, do have some (perhaps minor) contribution from people related to those groups. And I also do think that anyone who takes pride in this ancestry (which is partial at best, since obviously most groups have become very intermixed with local, indigenous desis) is basing it on physical appearance more than any perceived cultural greatness.
Perhaps because it is a part of one of our multiple identities and desis in the US, especially the 2nd gen are constantly wrestling with their identities as a minority in a sea of White Americans and islands of Black Americans and Hispanic Americans?
I’ve been having ‘caste’ experiences in both desh and out.
I had a Tamil Brahmin friend in Bangalore. His parents continuously refused to visit my place for any functions apparently because the food would be cooked by non-brahmins. The dad, an English professor often expressed, with some distate, that non brahmins priests were being allowed in some temples in Tamil Nadu. One of my friends cousins married out of caste in the US and my friend was prohibited from talking to her. My friend however used to break all these restrictions once out of sight..
Last year, as a favor, I had offered a lift to the president of the UP association here in CA. The first question she asked was ‘what is your caste?’. Apparently you can take the desi out of desh but not desh out of the desi.
It happens only in India(n)!
Ok, I stand corrected. Thanks.
Yeah right. Perhaps in your book he is, and that says a lot about you. To me anyone who thinks that a natural disaster that killed 100s of thousands of people, mostly outside India, could be divine retribution for the arrest in India of a hindu priest accused of murder, is an irrational, immoral imbecile; not “a very smart guy”.
Wow, you are as smart as Rajeev 🙂
You must think you are being very clever with your deceit. Think again pal. He did not call just these two women capricious; he made a sexist generalization and mentioned these two women as “cases in point”, or examples, to back up his misogyny.
BTW, another example of Rajeev Srinivasan’s wicked character is the column he wrote during the SARS epidemic in China in which this malicious jerk was actually gloating over the crisis. Schadenfreude he called it, which is german for “taking pleasure from someone else’s misfortune”. Thats the kind of people who usually glorify casteism, racism, slavery and other such abominations.
I call that BS. Show us an orthodox brahmin institution that requires a test before assigning caste.
show “us”? before anybody shows your multiple personalities anything, first try to find an “orthodox brahmin institution” that has the power to “assign caste” to anyone.
Lord of the Dings #341, How did you respond to her? I’ve been looking for a really smart, stinging, passive-aggressive response but haven’t found any I really liked 🙂
People who take pride in their imagined Aryan and Scythian ancestry are the biggest bunch of morons out there. If a white dude came up to me and satrted talking about his pride in his ‘warrior’ Viking and Aryan ancestors I’d laugh at him. The chances are that he’d be some Nazi whacko. When an Indian or Pakistani does it, they think they’re being cultured, refined, respecting their ‘roots’. I think those people need their heads examining — we need a mass psychiatric inspection to get to the bottom of this stupid delusion and ‘pride’ in their imagined racial lineage, and satirise the absolute pomposity that lies behind it.
It’s the ol’ imagined community thing only the community is in their head.
I knew a Pakistani girl — she was very attractive, quite fair skinned, but not white or anything, still brown. She didnt stop talking about her ‘Kamboh’ heritage, descent from Persians and Aryans, and said that she was closer to Europeans than to ‘dark skinned Indians’. She was otherwise intelligent and sane. Listening to her speak was like sitting in the lounge with a charming, intelligent, successful, level headed person, and in the middle of the conversation they tell you that they are communicating with extra-terrestrials through the TV set, and that they send her signals through the birds that sing on her window sill every morning. In other words, a glimpse of genuine madness and self delusion co-existing with the lucid and perfectly intelligent and rational.
I think an anthropologist and psychiatrist could have a field day with these people.
As long as I don’t hurt you by being a monkey-loving, wine-swilling Hindu Brahmin Packer fan, it’s all cool.
It’s all cool. Except for that Packer fan bit. That’s just not on. 😉
Red Snapper, I think you’re overreacting. The people who you are referring to as whackjobs, insane, delusional, etc. are, at most, simply wrong. In the case of Kambohs, they are a well-known tribe from Punjab, there are Hindu and Sikh Kambohs (Kamboj) as well, they’ve been referenced in the Mahabharat, and while to my knowledge they are not Persian origin, they ARE probably a mix of indigenous desi with some other ancient migrant blood. I agree that a lot of the Muslim ethnicities in the subcontinent are very fanciful in their tales of being descended from Arabs, Turks, Persians, and Mughals…and I suppose the same could apply to the various Sikh and Hindu groups who claim Aryan or other outside heritage. But the fact remains that all in the subcontinent do not look exactly the same, some groups look quite different from other groups, some do not look stereotypically ‘Indian’, and there has to be some reason for that. Is it just variation in the Indian population that has been there forever? Maybe. As for your example about Vikings…although I guess we are all lucky that more people don’t embrace that identity, but I think a modern day Swede has a right to be proud of his Viking roots…while hopefully acknowledging that rape, pillage, and plunder are not the way to go about doing things.
But I see your point that we don’t give white people a pass on their supremacist attitudes (neo-nazis being the extreme example), while often letting Indians who offer a similar (in some respects) narrative off the hook. I recognize that you are just calling that out, and I do agree with you on that…and hey, I’m here to learn and expand (and potentially alter) my viewpoints based on dialog with any reasonable elements here. So thanks for engaging.
Plus I want to see this go to 400 comments.
Red Snapper on May 16, 2007 08:35 AM · Direct link It’s the ol’ imagined community thing only the community is in their head. I knew a Pakistani girl — she was very attractive, quite fair skinned, but not white or anything, still brown. She didnt stop talking about her ‘Kamboh’ heritage, descent from Persians and Aryans, and said that she was closer to Europeans than to ‘dark skinned Indians’. She was otherwise intelligent and sane. Listening to her speak was like sitting in the lounge with a charming, intelligent, successful, level headed person, and in the middle of the conversation they tell you that they are communicating with extra-terrestrials through the TV set, and that they send her signals through the birds that sing on her window sill every morning. In other words, a glimpse of genuine madness and self delusion co-existing with the lucid and perfectly intelligent and rational.
I think an anthropologist and psychiatrist could have a field day with these people.
Couldn’t agree more. I really find when I am most insecure, I find stupid ways to think I am better than someone else; This girl is very insecure and very internally colonized.
I want to see this go to 400 too!